One more BPO unit, 1000 more jobs

Pune, November 26: US-based business process outsourcing (BPO) firm vCustomer Corporation has launched a 1,000-seat centre in Pune. This is the third major BPO to open shop in the city in the last two months, the others being EXL Services and Convergys.

The Pune centre will be vCustomer’s fourth centre in the country. It will handle the same mix of technology support and customer care processes like the vCustomer centres in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon.

‘‘This is in line with our expansion plans for the next 12 months when we will double our headcount to 6,000 and workstations to 3,000,’’ says Sujit Baksi, vCustomer’s president, India and head of global operations.

Customer is a BPO, contact centre and technology support service provider operating in India through its 100 per cent subsidiary, vCustomer Services India Pvt Ltd. A four-year old company, vCustomer has 2000 workstations with 3,000 employees on roll handling 2.5 million calls and emails per month.

Sushil Gupta, chief of Pune-based Software Technology Park of India, the nodal agency facilitating BPO operations, says things are looking up for the call centre business in the city with several major software firms making a foray into this segment by setting up their own operations.

‘‘As of today, close to 10 call centres operate from Pune and together they employ more than an estimated 6,000 professionals,’’ says Gupta. Big companies like EXL Services and Convergys are already employing nearly 2,000 personnel while Progion and Spectra Mind, subsidiaries of infotech giants Infosys and Wipro respectively, too have bigger plans in the days to come, he adds.

Firms like MSource are already an established name while relatively smaller units like Ocean Connect and Offshore Development Centre too were adding to the scene, says Gupta.